Tuck Everlasting Doesn't Bend the Rules

Remember earlier in the week when I wrote about the edgy, R- rated, sex-and-drugs romp, The Rules of Attraction?" Well, let me introduce you to its exact opposite, Tuck Everlasting. This movie is unabashedly corny. It has ZERO edge to it. None! The Rules of Attraction is set in the present day and is about such things as videotaping drunken teens having sex, pleasuring English professors orally, and slashing your wrists to bad alternative music. Tuck Everlasting, by contrast, is set in 1914 and is about such things as holding hands, running through golden fields, and embracing the cycles of life as you whistle that favorite tune from yesteryear. Cynically panning this movie for its labored innocence would be like sucker-kicking a shopping mall Santa Claus in the crotch. Sure, in the moment, it would be kind of fun. But you'd look like a real jerk doing it. And I don't want to look like a jerk.

Tuck Everlasting is a nice movie that stars Alexis Bledel from TV's The Gilmore Girls as Winnie Foster, a headstrong 15-year-old who dreams of escaping her wooded small town for adventures elsewhere. One day while wandering through the forest, she comes upon the guy who used to play Lucky Spencer on General Hospital. Lucky ... er, Jesse (Jonathan Jackson) is a member of the mysterious Tuck family, who live deep in the woods in a lakeside away from the rest of the townspeople.

Jesse and his angry brother, Miles (Scott Bairstow, formerly of Party of Five), basically kidnap Winnie to prevent her from revealing their "secret." What secret? That more than a century ago, the Tucks drank from a veritable fountain of youth there in the forest and haven't aged a day since. Once at the cabin, she meets Ma and Pa Tuck (Sissy Spacek and William Hurt) and is taken aback by their folksy good nature and mysterious ways. They're so different from her own stuffy, overly strict parents (Victor Garber and Amy Irving). Soon, she is running in grassy fields and making out under waterfalls with the scrawny dreamboat Jesse.

Unfortunately, the mysterious Man in the Yellow Suit (Ben Kingsley) arrives in town at the same time hot on the trail of the Tucks and their little secret. He wants a drink from the magical well, too, and will kill to get it. By the way, when I refer to Kingsley's character as The Man in the Yellow Suit, I'm not joking. That's how he is listed in the credits, and that's what he wears throughout the entire film. Tuck Everlasting takes place over several weeks, and you'd think that at some point, at least one of the characters would ask, "Yo, Mahatma. You may want to change the suit, guy. You're smellin' a little ripe there. Oh, and by the way, I didn't catch the name."

But I digress.

At 90 minutes, Tuck Everlasting moves along at a good enough pace to keep its target audience--teens and pre-teens engaged throughout. I saw this movie with a preview audience of mostly 12-year-old girls and their mothers, and there was much applause at the end. For me personally, the real thrill of the film was seeing rural Maryland (my home state) so vividly photographed on the big screen. James L. Carter's golden cinematography is quite striking throughout, making more use of dappled sunlight than a Thomas Kinkade gallery. I also really enjoyed the musical score by William Ross. During the periods when I was nodding off, Tuck Everlasting was quite a lovely movie to listen to. There was also some really neat digital composite shots that seamlessly morphed the town from 1914 to the present day and back again at several points in the film. Good job!

I just wish director Jay Russell had spent more time on the Winnie-Jesse romance, which should have been the strength and core of the film, but instead is given short-shrift. The two essentially fall in love during one of those movie montage sequences, and their pairing is just not given enough screen time to really develop and resonate. Instead, Russell gets too bogged down in telling too many side stories and pondering the pros and cons of immortality-too-familiar ground already covered in the various Highlander films and vampire flicks. Russell was the director of My Dog Skip, a remarkably sweet and good-hearted little movie that features one of the most quietly moving endings of any family film since Babe. It's too bad he couldn't have shown a similarly light touch here. Tuck Everlasting wears its heart on its sleeve. I just wish it was a little closer to its head.

Tuck Everlasting is rated PG for nothing overly objectionable. It does have one great line of dialogue. When Kingsley asks a priest to imagine what it would be like to live forever young free of death's cruel grip, the clergyman gasps, "You speak blasphemy!" Smiling, Kingsley replies, "Quite fluently."